Dave Perry shoots down Gaikai Sony partnership rumours

Gaikai CEO David Perry has dispelled rumours that the company would be partnering with Sony to stream PS2 and PS1 titles on current-gen Sony consoles, but revealed that Gaikai had been in talks with the company.

“I wasn’t even at the Sony press conference,” Perry told Eurogamer. “I was sitting in my hotel room, and I know everyone was like, ‘Oh my god, are they going to announce cloud gaming?’ And I was like, ‘No, they’re not going to announce cloud gaming.’ I wasn’t even there!”

Perry did, however, confess that the company had been in discussion with, not just Sony, but all platform holders “from the very beginning”.

“I’ve been meeting with them constantly, evangelising how far we’ve come – ‘you really should take this seriously’,” he told the publication. “Let’s just say they’re listening, and always have been. You see them when you go to conferences, we see them listening very intently – ‘how’s this going, where’s this going?'”

Perry summarised the interest of the major platform holders in cloud gaming as a necessary concern in the evolution of the industry. “To give you my real take on it, I honestly can’t think of a future for the console companies that don’t include cloud gaming at some point. They can hold out as long as they want to, but at some point, you don’t want to be the console that can’t do this. To some extent, I expect all three of them will have this.”

According to Perry, it is a future that Gaikai would like to be a part of. “We’re trying to be Switzerland in all of this, so we’re not competing with anyone. Samsung and LG are using our service, too. We’re just like, to some extent, the arms dealer. But we have to stay Switzerland – we can’t end up competing with anyone. I would like to see all of them use Gaikai, that’s my fantasy, right? It would be cool.”

Perry likened the introduction of cloud gaming to the mainstream to the introduction of MP3s and digital photos. However, all things considered, Perry doesn’t anticipate the transition will occour too rapidly. “I want to be very clear,” he added. “I don’t think physical media is going to go away really quickly.”